Why do Koch brothers inflame Democrats?

Is Americans for Prosperity's big Iowa push one of those exclamation-point changes feared by the big thinkers after the landmark Citizens United ruling, one that undermines not only the parties but the power of elected officials themselves?

"This is exactly what we were afraid of," said Sue Dvorsky, a former Iowa Democratic Party chairwoman, referring to the 2010 U.S. Supreme Court case that opened the floodgates for vast amounts of union and corporate money in politics. "This is bad news, and it's a real threat."

Part of the uneasiness stems from the fact that Americans for Prosperity has "essentially unlimited dollars that are untraceable," Dvorsky told The Des Moines Register in an interview. Unlike with donations to candidates and parties, Iowans can't see where the group's money is coming from or where it's going — and that leads to the breakdown of open government, she said.

Charles and David Koch, the multibillionaire co-founders of a predecessor organization to Americans for Prosperity, seem "creepy" because they're focused less on issues and more on simply tipping the electoral balance, Dvorsky said. David Koch is chairman of the board for the AFP Foundation.

To be fair, billionaires are also funding Democratic causes in Iowa, including environmentalist Tom Steyer, who's playing in this year's U.S. Senate race.

Other liberal groups also are working the long game here, including Organizing for America, an eight-year field program born out of President Barack Obama's first presidential campaign that remains focused on building a permanent majority for left-of-center candidates and issues.

Americans for Prosperity savages not only Democrats over issues such as Obamacare, but also Republicans. For example, it went after Iowa U.S. Rep. Tom Latham for his December vote for a federal budget that increases spending.

Teresa Oelke, AFP's vice president of state operations, said it's a point of pride that "we're not beholden to politicians."

What should Iowans make of the "be scared!" warnings from the left? Neutral analysts said Americans for Prosperity likely makes Democrats nervous because there's no equivalent organization on their side.

And keep in mind, they said, that both sides have long looked for bogeymen — Ted Kennedy, Newt Gingrich, Jerry Falwell, Hillary Clinton — to scare their supporters into action.

High-ranking Democrats in Washington, D.C., have decided that bashing the Koch brothers is a winning strategy for the 2014 midterms, said David Levinthal, an investigative reporter for the nonprofit Center for Public Integrity.

"It's a heck of a lot easier to rile up supporters about a living, breathing political villain," Levinthal said, "than it is some policy position printed on paper."

But, he added: "Just because a richer-than-Midas national organization rolls into Iowa and sets up shop doesn't mean that Iowans are required to love, or even listen to the group, regardless of who it is or who's behind it."